Redline The Stars Part 13

The woman spotted them as well. She could discern the lines where limbs and head were tucked in, but there was no sign that either creature was still alive.

They should be rather pretty little things, she thought, with that green color and equipped with wings. She would like to see them flying around, or even just relaxed enough to let her get a good look at them.

Green lizards must be harmless, peaceful, slow-flying beings if this was their typical response to interest from other life forms. It worked because their skins contained powerful poison glands; nothing biting into them once would repeat the experiment. Unfortunately, humans could not be repelled by that means, and she was glad Canuchean authorities were taking steps to protect the small animals.

Rael recalled herself to her purpose for being with this expedition. She did not rightly know how to begin, but she decided after some reflection to start by thinking kindly thoughts about the lizards. If Miceal was right and they could pick up interest in them, they might also be able to read that.

It was not a major order, at least. She was gently disposed toward them and sympathized with their situation.

It was probably wise to avoid most so-called intelligent beings, but she truly did wish they would make an exception in this case. She and Jellico meant them no hurt at all.

They only wanted to watch a while and capture a few images for later study and enjoyment ...

For several minutes, it looked as if the experiment was a failure; then a tiny, sharply pointed snout disengaged itself from the living ball and gazed tentatively about. Seconds later, the entire body uncoiled, followed in a breath's s.p.a.ce by the second lizard.

Each animal climbed the stem nearest it and worked its way outward along the bottom of the lowest frond. When they had traveled so far along the big leaves that they started to bend, the creatures deftly released their front legs, retaining their grip with the rear pair and tails. Two membrane-thin, pale green wings unfurled and began to beat slowly to support the lizards' upper bodies.

Several times, she saw their heads dart in to touch the bottom of a leaf. Were they feeding, she wondered, picking up insects or spores or maybe some extrudate from the plant? Her lenses were not quite good enough to tell her that, but the Captain's tri-dees could be developed at very high magnification and should be able to give them the answer, to that question and to a number of others besides.

For over an hour, the two green lizards clambered and fluttered from leaf to leaf. At last, both scrambled to the ground and scurried away from the stand of plants. Within moments, the thick growth had completely screened them from the off-worlders' sight.

The Medic gave a long, lingering sigh. "They were so wonderful," she said softly.

Jellico looked at her, as he had more than once during the past hour. She had been completely absorbed in watching the little creatures, more so even than he had been himself, and she had been happy in her absorption. Happy and unguarded. He realized this was the first time he had seen her shields go down for any significant length of time.

Her eyes were bright when they turned to him, but it was no longer possible to read with any certainty what lay behind them.

"How do you think we did?" she asked.

He slid his camera back into its case. "If a small part of these come out, we'll have exceeded our goal by a stellar margin. - Thank you, Rael Cofort."

"My pleasure," she replied, happy in herself and for him, "though I can't rightly say that I did much. I didn't feel anything in particular happening."

"I'd say it's likely that you helped," he said dryly, "considering that no one has ever before been able to study those little creatures in action since the day they were first discovered."

The woman frowned. "Miceal, how're you going to explain what we did? We don't really understand it ourselves."

"I'm not going to attempt an explanation," he responded rather stiffly. "I'll probably forget to mention the telepathy theory altogether."

"You can't do that!" she told him sharply. "You're too much a scientist."

"No," he agreed slowly. "I couldn't. I'm only going to touch on it in pa.s.sing, though, toss it in as a possibility, and suggest we may have succeeded because we were full of hope, not antic.i.p.ation or excitement that might come across as hunting instinct. I can't say more since we don't know what actually happened or if anything did happen at all. - I imagine you're not eager to wind up as part of an esper research project?"

"s.p.a.ce, no! I'd hitch a ride on Sanford Jones's glowing comet first." She shuddered. "Apart from the likelihood of running into trouble about the mystery surrounding my mother's antecedents, I know too much medically. There isn't any such thing as esper training and won't be for another few decades-or centuries if the funding dries up. All they do now is take folks apart for weeks and sometimes years at a stretch, and they don't always remember to put them back together again."

"That's more or less the way I had it figured," he said. "We can't publish what we tried. If the wrong people read about it and got interested, I wouldn't be able to protect you and neither would Teague. Esper research is a government project, and if they really wanted you for it, they'd get you."

"They won't hear anything from me," she promised fervently. Rael gave him a sidelong glance. "You're an awful worrier, aren't you?" she remarked. "You can find the gloomy side of anything."

Jellico laughed softly. "That's a prerequisite for my job. A starship Captain lacking that trait doesn't usually last long enough to acquire it. Unfortunately, his ship and everyone else aboard normally go out along with him."

His fingers drummed on the controls. He glanced at her as determination firmed in him. "Rael, I'd like some answers. None of this will go beyond me, and I know I'm out of my lane, but ..."

She sighed. "I'd like to be able to do more with animals. It seems that might actually be possible, and I'll work at it, but right now, I have to stand by what I said before. I don't know what happened here or if anything happened. I certainly can't supply an explanation."

"I'm not challenging that."

"What are you challenging?"

"Nothing. I just want to put a few questions to rest." The gray eyes gripped hers. "What happened to you in the Red Garnet?"

Her breath caught, and she started to frown, but she stopped herself. Ali and the others were this man's shipmates and subordinates. They would have described the whole incident in detail for him even if they had kept quiet about that part of it in front of the Patrol-Colonel. "I panicked."

"Aye. Why?"

Her eyes wavered. "I felt. . . something in there. What, I don't know, though believe that I've tried to figure it out. Maybe it was the rats' collective hunger, maybe some afterglow of the victims' horror and pain. Maybe it was something filthier, the eagerness of the subbiotics who could run an operation like that. They probably saw every stranger who walked into their lair as potential prey." She shuddered. "It was all over the place, choking and draining me. I- I had to get out of there!"

She regained command of herself. "I figured, too, as much as I could reason, that the others'd follow if I ran. Of course, a fight almost erupted instead . . ." Her lips tightened into a hard line. "I've got no excuse. I blew it badly, and you'd have been within your rights to boot me off the ship."

"None of my lads asked for that," he responded quietly.

Her eyes, which had been fixed on her clasped hands, lifted. "Would . . . would you have done it?"

"No. I'd have upheld your contract. Your term of service is almost out, and you're not going back into s.p.a.ce with us."

She just nodded. Jellico watched her for a moment. If he was ever going to hear the rest, it would have to be now, while she was thoroughly demoralized. "How can you function as a Medic?" he asked bluntly. Her answer to that could break her story, and it could give him some of the insight into her that he ever more strongly wanted to have.

"I don't have a problem with that," the woman responded without hesitation.

Her brows came together as she sought words to convey her meaning. "I'm definitely not what is usually thought of as an empath. I don't experience another's pain or emotions, but I do feel-uneasy when someone nearby is ill or injured. It is not a pleasant feeling. It's horrible, in point of fact, but it's not debilitating."

For a moment, anger drove back her pallor. "That's how I found the poor apprentice on the Mermaid. I knew something was wrong and hunted until I discovered him. If I hadn't, he'd probably have died where he lay. Slate certainly wouldn't have bothered looking for him even if he were missed in time. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d never even came to see him when he was dying." Her voice cracked. "Oh d.a.m.n . . ." she muttered as she was forced to fall silent.

Miceal's fingers brushed hers. "It's all right to care, you know," he told her gently. "s.p.a.ce, you're a Medic. You're supposed to care."

Cofort withdrew her hand. "The effect isn't c.u.mulative," she went on, her tone steady and impersonal once more. "I was afraid it might prove so when I started my emergency room rotation, but I had no difficulty. I was able to set the discomfort aside the same as if I were dealing with a single patient and get on with my work."

"Your gift has no real effect, then?" he asked thoughtfully.

"It might in a sense. I proved remarkably able at triage, and I could single out the most serious cases present, the heart attacks as opposed to the bad sprains."

"What about during the plague?"

She shook her head. "I wasn't conscious of anything particular then except for the constant fear and grief, but I was only a child, and we were all scared. I may have been picking something up, and I suppose I might have developed some inborn ability for handling the pressure, but I can't recall anything of the sort. I know the rest, such as it is, developed as I grew. It was a major factor in my choosing medicine as my specialty."

Rael seemed to slip into her own thoughts and said nothing more for several seconds. She roused herself abruptly and faced him. "What now. Captain?"

"We head back to the Queen." His hands rested On the controls, but he did not activate them immediately. "I don't know what life is like in the Cofort organization, but the Solar Queen welcomes whatever talents her crew has. That extends to pa.s.sengers and temporary hands. Bear that in mind if yours start working on you again."

Miceal brought the machine to a halt again just before they reached the outskirts of Canuche Town's suburbs.

Rael was surprised, but when she looked to the Captain for clarification, she found him staring straight ahead, his gaze apparently fixed on some point in the far distance. "Is something wrong?" she inquired anxiously.

"Wrong, no, but the Queen will be lifting tomorrow."

"Aye. By midafternoon if nothing delays delivery of the last Caledonia shipment."

"Are you going to accept Macgregory's offer?"

"No."

"Think carefully, Rael. He meant every word of it. You're not likely to run into a chance like this again."

"Do you want me to accept it?" she asked carefully.

"What I want's irrelevant. It's your life, and this is a major decision."

The woman shook her head. "No, I'm not going to accept. I don't like Canuche of Halio. She's Adroo Macgregory's homeworld, and he naturally loves her. I'm not going to tell him how I feel about her, but of all the Federation's habitable planets on which I might eventually choose to settle, this one's pretty near the bottom of the list. Besides, I don't want to leave the starlanes. That's where I was born, and that's where I belong."

Jellico's eyes dropped. He realized he had been gripping the controls so tightly that his knuckles glistened white under the stretched skin and hastily eased his hold. "I think that's the wiser choice, though maybe not the most financially sound one," he told her.

She studied him gravely. "I answered your question. Now answer mine. Did you wish me to accept Mr. Macgregory's offer?"

"No. No, I did not. It would've been a disaster. Macgregory's every inch an autocrat-benevolent maybe, but a despot all the same. A Free Trader's too independent to stay under the thumb of someone like that long-term."

"You'd have let me go ahead despite that?"

"I had no right to stop you, Rael, though I would've raised the question for your consideration and stressed it pretty strongly had you given me a different answer."

His eyes were somber. "That'll leave you at loose ends once we lift. Do you have anything particular in mind?"

Cofort nodded. "I was planning to approach Deke Tatarcoff. I've never known him not to be shorthanded, and I've given him good reason to respect my abilities. If that doesn't work out, I'll just hang around for a while. This port's busy enough that I'm bound to pick up a berth in fairly short order, even if it's just another single-voyage hop to some backwater hole."

She saw him start to frown and shrugged delicately. "If it looks like there's going to be a delay, I have no objection to taking on-world work for a time to keep body, soul, and store of credits together. Some of the hospitals in Canuche Town can probably use a part-time Medic, and should worse come to worse, I might even try to wrangle a temporary job out of Adroo Macgregory."

"It sounds reasonable," he said without looking at her. "I have to confess that I had some reservations about just leaving you here."

"I'm not one who's ever likely to let herself starve."

"No."

Her voice softened. "Thank you, Miceal Jellico," she said. She sat a little straighter. "Let's go back and develop those tri-dees. I'm dying to see what we gained for our efforts."

Jellico shivered. Even this far from the sh.o.r.e, the sea breeze was sharp and cold and would remain so for a while yet, until Halio had warmed the land sufficiently to reverse the thermal currents and bathe the city in dry, hot, inland currents.

That alteration in the flow of the breeze, quite independent of the predominant prevailing winds, which moved parallel to the land, was a real blessing to the inhabitants of the city during the blistering months of the summer. A heat haze might shimmer over Canuche Town's streets by day, but at night, people slept well beneath light blankets.

Rael joined Jellico at the hatch, and they descended together. Both had business in the city. The Captain intended to get the flier back to the rental agency before he had to pay a second day's charges for it, and she had asked to accompany him since he would be pa.s.sing close to the Caledonia plant. She wanted to give Macgregory her answer face-to-face or at least deliver a personal letter to his office if he should not be there this early rather than merely calling in her refusal over the Queen's transceiver as they prepared her for s.p.a.ce. He deserved the courtesy of the greater effort on her part.

She smiled as she took her place in the pa.s.senger seat.

The vehicle had done them good service the previous evening ferrying them all to the restaurant the crew had chosen for their last-night dinner. It had been a fine affair all around. If their eatery had not been another Twenty-Two. the food had been good, and they had enjoyed it and themselves, Ali Kamil as thoroughly as any of his comrades. He had seemed more at ease than she had hitherto seen him, certainly more so than he had been since they had planeted on Canuche of Halio. The confirmation of the industrial planet's apparently dark history and the reality of the peril still hanging over her had affirmed and the reality of his gift. That was a relief in itself, and it was a relief that they would soon be leaving the dangerous world behind.

"We'll cut around by the Cup," Miceal told her as they started out. "It's a bit longer that way, but I want to get a good look, at the ships."

"You're the skipper. Besides, I'd like to see them close up myself." She stifled a yawn. "After crawling out of my bunk so soon in order to see Mr. Macgregory, I hope he is an early riser."

"That one? You can put credits down oh it. He won't squander valuable daylight hours in bed."

"You needn't squander any time, either," she told him, "at least not waiting for me. Once you drop me off, just turn the flier in and go on back to the Queen. I'll find my way home."

"Not a chance. Van'd be asking what happened to my wits if I failed to make so obvious a courtesy call on our ill.u.s.trious client."

They soon came within sight of the ocean. Only two large vessels were at dock in the Cup, the low, squat Regina Maris and another slightly larger craft with the name Sally Sue displayed on her prow and sides. A number of small boats attended to the freighters' needs or to their own.

Both of the big ships were the center of considerable activity. Miceal slowed the flier down to hover to better observe the scene. "Look at that, Rael," he said softly. "It's like a moment frozen in time. A few centuries back, that's what we'd have been doing."

She nodded. If that was all there was, they would be part of it. Trade was in their souls, and neither of them would have been content with the role of sedentary shopkeeper.

She frowned somewhat disapprovingly as she continued to study the on-worlders working around the Regina Maris.

A bit of concentrated study stripped some of the perfection from the picture for one who was familiar with the management of bulk cargo. "They go in for a lot of fuss, don't they?" she remarked. There was not half this ado when a starship was being loaded.

Jellico started to agree, but then he frowned. Commotion was one thing; idleness was another. There were a lot of dock laborers just standing about, leaving the cargo lying where it was. Those people were paid by the hour.

Whether he traversed a single planet's seas or the starlanes, no ship's master would tolerate a pack of idlers leeching away his always tight port expense funds. "She's in trouble," he announced sharply even as he sent the flier surging forward.

In another moment, they came to a stop beside a group of longsh.o.r.emen. "What's the problem?" he asked.

"What's it to you, s.p.a.ce hound?" one countered. There was no real hostility in the question, just a petty enjoyment in momentary superiority over the off-worlder with his supposedly more interesting lifeway.

"Most Captains sympathize with a ship in trouble," he responded more mildly than he would have done with one of his own kind.

"A bit of a fire on the Man's," the speaker told him. Miceal's expression registered his concern, and the longsh.o.r.eman continued quickly. "It's not the same thing as you chaps have to face in s.p.a.ce," he a.s.sured them, "at least not here in port where the crew can get off quickly. This is nothing, anyway. They'll probably have it out in a few minutes."

"Maybe," interjected the older man standing beside him.

Jellico eyed him curiously. "You have your doubts?"

"I was the one who smelled the smoke and alerted her Captain. To my mind, he should forget about saving the. cargo and really pour in water and foam. Masters have lost ships before by playing around with steam for too long."

"Steam?" Rael asked.

He nodded. "Live steam. It replaces the oxygen in the air, smothering a blaze while being reasonably kind to the goods stored around it. It's most useful in the early stages of a tightly confined fire, though. Give the flames any chance to spread, to escape into the hull between the holds, and you've got big trouble."

"You think that's happened here?"

"Well, it's not for me to say, but a fire large enough for me to sniff out just by walking near an open hatch is a deal more than a spark, and I'm willing to put down a few credits that they haven't gotten it licked even yet."